Clarity

  • 1.  CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 14, 2014 12:31 PM

    How does Clarity manage list of data with different currency codes?

    Within an investment, if the investment is not associated with an Entity, you can define and change the investment currency code at any time. Simply changing the currency code on an investment does not perform any recalculations on the existing number values within the investment to convert the data using the currency code foreign exchange rate. Other investments may be associated with an Entity that has specific currency codes defined. Once an investment is associated with an Entity, the investment currency code will use the defined codes in the Entity and cannot be changed. If the investment does not have any financial transactions created, the Investment billing currency code can be changed.

    The Investment Cost Plan has two views. The 'Investment Currency View' allows the user to see the cost plan data with the investment currency code. This is the native amounts saved within the investment when the cost plan is created. The 'Billing Currency View' allows the user to see the cost plan data with the billing currency code and the monetary values are converted using the defined foreign exchange rates.

    With an Object List View, it is possible to have a list of investments with different currency codes. Any monetary fields included in the list view configuration will simply display as the saved numerical value; no conversion calculations are applied. Therefore it is important to also include the currency code field on the list view so that the end-user will be aware of the meaning of the saved values.

    With an Investment Hierarchy List View, there are limitations on how investments can be added as a 'Child' or 'Parent' investment. Only investments belonging to the same Entity or with no Entity association are shown on the 'Add Parent' or 'Add Child' pages. The reason for the limitation is that the Investment Hierarchy, Financial Roll-up list has to only allow investments within same Entity for one currency as our List Views and Hierarchical Grids are not Multi-Currency aware. It is up to the user, when selecting investments that do not belong to an Entity to be aware of the currency of the investment being added to the hierarchy. If an Investment Hierarchy includes a investments with different currencies, the end-user can create filters to manage the list for displaying aggregations that roll-up data for the same currency code. The list of hierarchy investments can also be exported to Excel for further manipulation by the end-user for converting and comparing monetary values.

     



  • 2.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Posted May 14, 2014 05:36 PM

    Kathryn,

    What I'm reading, and seeing now from testing, is that the Currency field on the Budget page has no value.  I can set it to CNY, but if my entity is set to USD, all my plans end up in USD (the Currency field on Plan Properties page is USD and grayed out - no opportunity to change to CNY).

    Our only options seem to be

    1. Create one entity for each currency that we need to plan with (we have several thousand inflight projects currently on a single entity, today)
    2. Force the company to perform all planning in USD, leaving reports to do the conversion to local currencies for local management needs

    Is this correct?  If yes, please tell me that this all changes in 14.1.

    Dale

     

     



  • 3.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 14, 2014 07:31 PM

    Yes. Basically Entities control the currencies.  Look at the Cost Plan 'Investment View' versus the 'Billing View' ; if the investment currency is different than the billing currency, you will see the conversion.  I have not heard of any changes to this area in the next version.  I could not find any ideas posted on the wall similar to what you are saying.

     

     

     



  • 4.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Posted May 14, 2014 07:45 PM

    Personally, I think it would be great if Clarity could support these features:

    1. In the Cost Plan View, enter Cost Forecasts for a mix of currencies. (eg, AUD, USD, GBP and NZD planned costs in the one cost forecast on the one project, together with processed actuals in all currencies)

    2. In the Cost Plan View, populate from Team / Task assignments should have a capability to populate into the Cost Plan using a mix of currencies on the one project. (eg if reseources are working overseas compared to where the project is being managed)

    3. In the 'Billing View', convert all said planned costs into one selected currency (eg controlled by the entity, or have it as a drop down next to the billing view/investment currency selector)

    Please correct me if these features are there already - I'd be happy to learn how!

    Also, in a program / hierarchy / financial rollup views, an ability to view child project investments in the Billing View currency, having all mix of currencies in the Project's Cost Forecasts converted to the one viewing Currency. (eg from the mix of USD, GBP, AUD, NZD in each cost plan of each project converted up to AUD for the program, using the foreign exchange matrix in Clarity.)

    Hope that makes sense?

    Sam.

    [Edits typos]



  • 5.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Posted May 21, 2014 08:07 PM

    Hi Sam

    You should be able to do option 2 already via the rate matrix set up that will cater for your different currencies depending on your rules.  Lots of options.  May have mis read your question though if you are talking about view in Cost Plan! but resources planning can be populated using multiple currencies.

    The cost plan view will obviously still be in the 'HOME' and billing currency set for the investment. 

     

    Ciao

    Michael



  • 6.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Posted May 28, 2014 07:38 PM

    Thanks Michael. You are right, but I still see shortcomings specifically with what we are trying to do. For the sake of the Tuesday Tips audience, I won't go into it more here.
     



  • 7.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Posted May 15, 2014 09:22 AM

    This is bad news.

    • we started, due to Niku  6 lack of dept/location config capabilities, with many entities, in order to fit our structure into Niku
    • with later versions of Clarity, with  the abiltiy to configure departments, we moved back to a single entity
    • we were using USD, as this is all we could support at the time
    • we now want to move to multi-currency, but have thousands of inflight projects running on a single entity
    • we can't move these projects between entities, not without working directly on the DB
    • we have projects where the resouorces supplied come from several regions, with different currencies
    • planning needs to be done at local level and reported in whatever currency the reviewers need to see it in, regardless of the view they are looking at - and this will be oftentimes different than the billing currency (for example, reviewed at CEO level in USD, where customer is in China, billed in CNY)

    Historically, I'd been told that entities were for companies that had separate businesses that had separate financial reporting requirements.  This made sense, and I could see why one would not want to transfer projects between entities, if that's what entities were used for.  But under this definition of an entity, one can have a business that operates in different countries, with different planning currencies.  Maybe the 'entity controls planning currency' was there in front of me all the time, but it was the old  story - 'didn't see the forest for the trees.'

    From what I'm reading here, elsewhere and testing, it seems that the current design can't work, that it can't meet our requirements, that the current design has mutually exclusive results (use one entity, can move projects between departments/locations but can't plan using different currencies; use more than one entity, can plan project in local currency, but can't move projects between entities).

    I want to be wrong about this.  Will contact our local field/pre-sales reps.  We have an effort underway to upgrade or planning process - to use the staff plan to produce the labor cost plan, to use multi-currencies at the local level and USD/EUD/CNY at reporting levels. 

    If you have any customers that operate in an environment that sounds like ours, that are operating successfully with Clarity fin plans in multi-currency, would like to contact them to see how they are doing this.



  • 8.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 15, 2014 12:31 PM

    Check out the Clarity Solution Pack (CSP) Reports.

    For Example, the Financial Forecast Review by Investment Report has a parameter to select a currency code.  If you look at the documentation, this parameter provides the ability to generate the report in a different currency if the configuration is setup as noted...

    -- snippet from CSP 3.3 Product Documentation --

    The Report Currency parameter allows you to convert the amounts in the report to one currency for reporting purposes. If you select a currency in the parameter, then the amounts in the report will be converted into that currency per the exchange rates set up in Clarity, if the report currency is different from the investment currency. If you do not select a currency in the parameter, then the report displays amounts in the entity’s home currency of the department associated to the investment.
    In order to use this Report Currency parameter to convert currencies, you must have multi-currency enabled in your installation of Clarity (Administration/Finance-Setup/Defaults). In the Currency section, there is a System field that must be set to Multi Currency. In addition to multi-currency being enabled, you must also activate the currencies you want to use in Clarity (Administration/Finance-Setup/Currency). Lastly, you must set up Foreign Exchange rates in Clarity (Administration/Finance-Setup/Foreign Exchange Rates). The report uses exchange rates with an Exchange Rate Type of 'Average' so you must set up exchange rates of this type.

     



  • 9.  RE: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Managing List of Data with Different Currencies

     
    Posted May 14, 2014 07:21 PM
    Kathryn_Ellis:

    How does Clarity manage list of data with different currency codes?

    Within an investment, if the investment is not associated with an Entity, you can define and change the investment currency code at any time. Simply changing the currency code on an investment does not perform any recalculations on the existing number values within the investment to convert the data using the currency code foreign exchange rate. Other investments may be associated with an Entity that has specific currency codes defined. Once an investment is associated with an Entity, the investment currency code will use the defined codes in the Entity and cannot be changed. If the investment does not have any financial transactions created, the Investment billing currency code can be changed.

    The Investment Cost Plan has two views. The 'Investment Currency View' allows the user to see the cost plan data with the investment currency code. This is the native amounts saved within the investment when the cost plan is created. The 'Billing Currency View' allows the user to see the cost plan data with the billing currency code and the monetary values are converted using the defined foreign exchange rates.

    With an Object List View, it is possible to have a list of investments with different currency codes. Any monetary fields included in the list view configuration will simply display as the saved numerical value; no conversion calculations are applied. Therefore it is important to also include the currency code field on the list view so that the end-user will be aware of the meaning of the saved values.

    With an Investment Hierarchy List View, there are limitations on how investments can be added as a 'Child' or 'Parent' investment. Only investments belonging to the same Entity or with no Entity association are shown on the 'Add Parent' or 'Add Child' pages. The reason for the limitation is that the Investment Hierarchy, Financial Roll-up list has to only allow investments within same Entity for one currency as our List Views and Hierarchical Grids are not Multi-Currency aware. It is up to the user, when selecting investments that do not belong to an Entity to be aware of the currency of the investment being added to the hierarchy. If an Investment Hierarchy includes a investments with different currencies, the end-user can create filters to manage the list for displaying aggregations that roll-up data for the same currency code. The list of hierarchy investments can also be exported to Excel for further manipulation by the end-user for converting and comparing monetary values.

     


    Thanks for the tip Kathryn!